


Paid in Full

by Trash



Category: Linkin Park, Silent Hill
Genre: Death, Drugs, Gen, Horror, Rape, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-21
Updated: 2014-01-21
Packaged: 2018-01-09 13:07:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1146357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trash/pseuds/Trash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rob goes to hell for his sins, and it's nothing like the fiery pit with pool parties that all the songs he's ever listened to have told him it is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paid in Full

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the now defunct http://erickzombie.deviantart.com 's amazing art. http://ow.ly/sNg1z

 

The helmet is heavy and cuts into his shoulders, his neck. It smells like rot and old blood, copper rising sharp and sweet all around him. This, he supposes, is what death smells like.

 

It’s almost impossible to see anything in his peripheral line of vision unless he turns his head to the side. The knife he carries is impossibly heavy and sparks spit up from the floor when he drags is along the ground.

 

This is his punishment. Left alone with the rust and the blood and the bodies.

 

But all he can think is that, for Hell, there’s surprisingly little fire.

 

***

 

America, the billboard across the street from Rob’s apartment says, is a nation under God.

 

He was high when they pasted the poster to the board six months ago. The drugs coursing through his system make Uncle Sam who is pointing at him from the poster look monstrous, fangs dripping saliva like acid and burning holes into the street below. At the top of his booming voice he hisses “I want  _you_ to repent for your sins.”

 

Fucking LSD.

 

He sat watching the billboard all night, smoking a fat joint of weed to calm himself down. He watched Uncle Sam change shapes, his fangs shortening until he was left with nothing but a soft, toothless mouth. Pink, wet and laughing at Rob who cowered behind his sofa.

 

Not having a job means not paying taxes and using the money his parents left him when they died to buy drugs and pay rent, bills for the lights he only has on in the winter and the TV he has on every day.

 

Not that he watches the thing anyway. Mostly he’s too strung out on heroin to understand what the hell is going on. Then the comedown finds him locked in his closet with the handgun he borrowed from a friend and never gave back.

 

When he does watch it, though, he avoids MTV. It reminds him of his past – the band he quit because rehearsing regularly meant staying sober. They’d had a dream, the same dream  _every_  garage band has, of making it big.

 

And they did. Without Rob.

 

“There are other drummers in the world, Rob,” The singer had shouted at him. For probably only weighing one hundred pounds, Chester Bennington had one hell of a voice on him and it shook Rob to his core.

 

“I’m  _sorry_ ,” He mumbles, stepping away from Chester’s angry face, “I just can’t.”

 

“Can’t? Or won’t.”

 

Both, probably. Never did have much will power.

 

So the only thing left is the news where he sees pictures of war, famine, resistance, death, more war. He remembers history class in school and learning about the holocaust. Religious genocide. And now, on the news, he’s seeing it all again.

 

After the news there’s TV evangelists selling Christianity and fifty dollar bibles, bumper packs to faith. Like God is going to save any of them now.

 

Some guy in an Armani suit with a thrift store tie is quoting the Bible, saying “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.”

 

But Rob looks around his shit hole of an apartment and out of the window where the sky is almost chemical green and it’s hardly ever dark. Yeah, he thinks, this is the end of the world. But where the fuck is Jesus?

 

***

 

He gets a letter through the post one day that says he’s been drafted for war and that he should report to the army base at the address included on the map attached.

 

He laughs, at first, but that could be the speed making this funny when it really isn’t.

 

Drafted to war. The words are written in blood, he thinks. His blood. And he wonders how they got it, because he’s never been hurt for a while. He doesn’t even bleed anymore when he pulls the needle out.

 

Going to war is certain death, Rob thinks.

 

He’d rather just take too much heroin. Too many Valium. Go to sleep and never wake back up.

 

So, he does.

 

***

 

The sound of metal on metal is what wakes him up. Then the heat hits him like a wave and he sits up, struggling to push himself to his feet as he chokes on the stale air.

 

On his head is a helmet that he can barely stand under the weight of but cannot remove, the pain of his skin being torn from his bone as he tugs has him crying out in agony.

 

“Where am I?”

 

The voice that comes out of his mouth isn’t his. It is gravelly, lower than he’s ever spoken in his life. He is standing on a metal grate, rust eating away at it in parts. His feet, he notices, are encased in tightly laced boots that go up to his knees but are hidden beneath a white skirt that stops just beneath his chest.

 

“Am I dead?” Comes the voice that isn’t his again.

 

There’s the whirring of a fan, the sound of massive metal blades cutting through the hot air. But other than that there is silence.

 

Then the metal on metal sound comes again.

 

A man rounds the corner of the rusted hallway in front of Rob, dragging two huge swords behind him, sparks spitting up from the ground with each step he takes. On the man’s head is a red helmet, pyramid in shape and terrifying and Rob wonders if his own looks like that.

 

He cowers as the man draws closer but realises he has nowhere to go. He’s trapped here, wherever he is, and he has no way of protecting himself.

 

It occurs to him that this may all just be one really bad trip. Probably, he’s back in his apartment still reading the letter telling him to join the army. But the smell of rot here is almost tangible, and he finds that he can’t even lie to himself.

 

The man stops in front of him and says nothing, simply drops one of the swords at Rob’s feet and drops his own behind him. Steps closer, pushing Rob against the metal chain-link fence behind him and reaching between his legs to grab his crotch roughly.

 

Rob squeaks and tries to move away but the man squeezes harder and groans with every move he makes as if he’s in great pain.

 

“Don’t think you’re safe here,” He says, his voice deep, “Don’t think we won’t kill you just because you’re one of us.”

 

“One of…who are you?”

 

“The punished.” The man says, and turns away, grabbing his sword and disappearing into the darkness.

 

***

 

He changes – never used to want to hurt a fly before but now, with the weight of his ever present helmet crushing down on him, it’s hard not to be angry at everybody without one on.

 

There are families here, living out their lives amongst the rot and the metal and the heat because they didn’t repent. Families from religions that are not Catholic. They’re fucking stupid, Rob thinks, and they brought this all on themselves.

 

So pushing the mother down so her head hangs over the edge of the metal walk way and her hair dangles inches above the ever-turning fan, it’s blades rusted and broken away to sharp shards that could decapitate in a second, doesn’t make him feel bad in any way.

 

He rapes her; hard, angry thrusts that make her scream in agony. He turns his head away from her so that he can watch her face as she cries. Under his breath he hisses  _fuck you_  he grunts  _fuck you for doing this to me._

 

But it’s not her who did it to him, is it? He did this to himself.

 

He fights back bitter tears and pulls out of her impatiently. He grans his sword and brings it down hard into her stomach, blood flying up to stain his helmet, his clothes. She stops fighting and, after a while, he pushes her down over the edge and into the fan.

 

Her children, they watched it all.

 

And he just walks away from them.

 

***

 

The deepest circle of hell, that’s where the Red Pyramids come from. Drug addicts and athiests and people from discouraged faiths. People who prayed to be here. Suicides, murderers, rapists. They’re all here. To some this is living out their fantasy, but to Rob it’s exactly what it is supposed to be – Hell.

 

He learns that you can’t die here. The mother he killed, he sees her around daily and she hurries away from him when he raises his sword with a smirk that she can’t even see. One time he tried to kill himself, impaled himself on a spear.

 

He bled for hours and blacked out. When he came to his helmet was gone and he was in a room that was bleached white. A nurse stood by his bedside, hands on her hips. Her lips, sewn together, bled down onto her white uniform leaving a grotesque tie-dye of brown and red.

 

She forced the helmet back onto him. He should have been able to fight back but he couldn’t. He simply took a deep breath of the somewhat clean air in the room before the heavy metal was back on his head, his shoulders, and the smell of decay filled his nose.

 

***

 

He dreams of storms. Thunder, lightning and rain beating down on his skin. He burns where it touches but it’s a good sensation. Storms always terrified him, but now he is terrified about waking up to a sword at his throat, to maggots on his skin or the rapists.

 

When he wakes up he wants to cry but the heat dries his tears before they fall.

 

All he wants is rain.

 

To have joined the army.

 

And for things to be different in countless ways.

 

But all he can do is pick up his sword, and drag it out of the room.

 

Sparks flying up like the lightning in his dreams.


End file.
